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Disaster plan needs to be reviewed

With the recent world disasters and the Level 3 Emergency at Teck, local resident questions Trail's emergency plan.

With the recent disasters that have plagued our world and the Level 3 Emergency at Teck recently I was curious about our Trail’s community plan in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.

Community Emergency

A community emergency is a crisis situation natural or otherwise that requires immediate attention or conditions will worsen and the possibility of a life or death situations can occur or where an incident at Teck is classified as a Level Three (Major) Emergency and the surrounding community may be impacted.

What do we, as a community, do in this event?

I went to the Trail web page to see if there was a community plan. I did not find anything.

I asked a counsellor who led me to the Ministry Of Environment web page.

Here I found nothing to assist us in the event of a disaster at Trail.

I then went to work and discovered a Teck document that mentioned:

“The City of Trail Municipal Emergency Plan.”

The primary intent shall be to deal with emergencies associated with Teck products or the Trail and Warfield plants.

The plan also provides for Teck to respond with assistance, advice and resources in the role of “corporate citizen” in the event of community emergency situations unrelated to our operations.

The plan has an alarm to inform the citizens of Trail to the emergency.

The Community Alarm signal is: (10 blasts of the fire whistle). I asked several people if anyone was aware of this alarm and found not one person who was aware of this.

We have an Air Raid siren that I believe is still operational, when was the last time this got tested. This air raid siren could be incorporated into our Community plan.

The existing alarm is not a very effective alarm if no one knows of the alarm if we were involved in an emergency.

We cannot live in the dark. Emergencies whether they are man-made or natural disaster can happen at any time, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and think we are safe and that it will never happen here. We need to educate the citizens of Trail and practice what to do in the event of a natural or a man-made disaster.

Teck has done its part by cooperating  with the City of Trail in the development of an Emergency Plan.

This plan dates back to at least  decade.  It’s now the city’s job to get this plan out to the residents in a timely fashion.

Dominic Isernia

Trail